Hello friend,

This is the replication package for the analysis presented in "Vietnam’s Payments for Forest Ecosystem Services scheme’s puzzling role in protecting longstanding forests as deforestation rates rise." It contains the data used for the analysis, as well as the R code we used to generate all the plots and tables in the manuscript.

We have designed the code for execution in an R Studio environment, but this really only affects the first few lines, which directs R to the appropriate folder on the computer. Our code uses the R studioapi package to automatically direct R to whatever location the replication folder is found. If you are not using R Studio, you'll simply have to set the working directory to the replication folder location, but everything else should work as written in the code.

Everything can be run from the code in the VietnamPFESReplication.R file. All the data are found in the VietnamPFESData.csv file. We have included variable descriptions in the Variable Definitions.csv file. Citations for all the data sources can be found in the manuscript in Table 1. 

The code also includes a matching test to compare forest change rates for polygons that border on - but are not a part of - a PFES area. While not mentioned in the manuscript, we included this analysis as a test for potential leakeage through displacement of deforestation outside PFES boundaries. The estimated results find no evidence of either positive or negative impacts from PFES on deforestation rates immediately outside PFES watersheds.

Should you have any questions or need any help getting the replication to work, please don't hesitate to contact Caleb Gallemore at gallemoc@lafayette.edu, or, if for some reason he is no longer with Lafayette College when you are reading this, at caleb.gallemore@gmail.com.

Thanks very much for taking an interest in our work! We hope it's useful for you!

~Caleb